An open dialogue between husband and wife about design decisions and, more generally, creating a home we can be proud of.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Freeze Panic!!

Last weekend when we went up to the house I commented to the contractor that we didn't have much more time to get any "pre-freeze" work taken care of, such as trenching the side of the house to avoid further damage from frost-heave and, more trivially, draining the hot tub sitting in the driveway which had filled with rainwater so that it didn't freeze and burst the various jet feed tubes or worse. He said we still had plenty of time before it would freeze up there. I figured he was right so all I did was stick a couple hoses into the hot tub and suck water through them to get them siphoning (sadly, there was mud in the hose when I first sucked on it so I got a mouthful - ick!).

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I began hearing that a big snowstorm was predicted for the catskills for this weekend. It would take weeks of freezing temperatures to freeze the ground enough to cause any more frost-heave damage, but it would only take one freezing night to break the hot tub pipes. So, suddenly began to worry that I might be too late to save the hot tub.

I got up early on Saturday morning and picked up my pop (who happens to be in town) and we zoomed up to the house where we siphoned the last of the water out of the tub, shop-vac'ed the water out of all the jets and hoses and pipes, built a plywood cover for it and put two tarps over the cover. And not a minute too soon. It began to snow pretty heavily while I was laying the tarps and tying them on.

Then, as we were heading down the driveway to get on the road home in hopes of avoiding a blizzard on the ddrive home, my dad asked if maybe I should worry about pipes in the house freezing. So I drove back and drained the pipes and suctioned out the last of the water in the toilet and then spent 45 minutes waiting for the pressure tank to drain completely - at a trickle - into a condensation pump which ejected it out of the basement (the tank was still at least half full when we finally just left it draining into the pump - couldn't wait any longer).